Journey Into Strange Tales Issue 119: Marvel/Atlas Science Fiction & Horror Comics!

 

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 104

May 1956 Part I

by Peter Enfantino

and Jack Seabrook

Adventure Into Mystery #1

Cover by Bill Everett

"Future... Tense!" (a: Bob Forgione) ★★

"The Dark Side of the Moon!" (a: Bob Powell) ★1/2

"The Conquerors" (a: John Forte) ★★

"The Dream Creatures" (a: Kurt Schaffenberger) ★

"Where the Grass is Always Greener" (a: Tony Mortellaro) ★1/2

"Inside the Iceberg" (a: Manny Stallman) ★

Amid the turmoil of the CCA, Atlas launches Adventure Into Mystery, a title that will stick around for only eight bi-monthly issues and will accentuate the veer away from horror and into fantasy/SF. Nothing in this first issue signals a rise in script quality, but at least there was still a solid art bullpen to draw from (pun intended).

We kick off with "Future... Tense," a SF yarn about playwright Rod Clayton selling his first script to television. On the night Rod's play is to be aired, he's shocked to discover the drama has been preempted for an episode of Car 54, Where Are You? On the verge of calling his lawyer, Rod is visited by a "Scanner," an agent from the future who scans all TV programs from the past (meaning the 1950s... try to stay with me here) for nuggets of dangerous info that might cause harm to the future. Evidently, Rod's play (about a scientist who learns how to open the part of our brain that's never used) ticks several boxes. 

The Scanner informs Rod his play will never air and that the writer has two options: Rod can stay in the 1950s and have the part of his brain that remembers the play erased, or he can travel to the future to live with other futurians. Remembering the cute little wife he has at home, Rod opts for the former and elects to write comedies instead of sci-fi. "Future... Tense!" has an interesting concept but some weak graphics. The twist climax sees Rod and all those around him commenting on this phantom play that was to be aired and all I could think was the Scanner was lousy at his job. 

A scientist is obsessed with finding out what happens on "The Dark Side of the Moon!" and he's working on a gizmo that just may offer him the first glimpse. Then he stumbles across a game in a store that transports him to said Dark Side and he realizes that some things are best left unseen. Bob Powell's graphics, usually so crisp and eye-catching, look almost unfinished here. 

"The Conquerors" is a not-so-thinly-disguised poke at Communism. From the get-go, we are led to believe Earthlings have landed on another planet for the sole purpose of indoctrinating the alien world's population into the ways of its conquerors. This new world is the first step into aligning the galaxy ("Our way must be spread to every planet"). Eventually, the invaders are surprised to learn that this "primitive" race has enough know-how to turn the tables. The story wouldn't be so bad if the uncredited writer (reads like Commie-Hater Stan but was he even scripting these things by 1956?) hadn't spent so much energy on the obvious reveal, that it's Earth that's being invaded and Earthlings who are the smart ones. 

In the future, there is no anxiety, so there is no dreaming. That is, until "The Dream Creatures" arrive and fill all sleepy heads with powerful images. At only three pages, "The Dream Creatures" barely works up a plot and has a pretty dopey twist as well.

Two lovebirds in an undersea kingdom wonder what the surface world is all about. When they receive permission from their King, Kanu and Bala head for New York and the giant skyscrapers they could only see from a distance. Since they can only breathe air for two hours, they have to cut their visit short, but since New Yorkers are a pushy bunch, the mer-pair feel they've scratched their itch and return home forever. "Where the Grass is Always Greener" is an odd duck; as though Stan ordered up a light-hearted Namor romp. Kanu is a dead ringer for the Sub-Mariner (sans little wings on his feet), which is odd since there was a Namor series ongoing at the time.

Captain Jeff Marlin was obsessed with icebergs. Hated them. Wanted to destroy any he stumbled into while sailing his big ship. Then, one day, Marlin hops on top of a big chunk of ice and falls into its hollow middle. Soon, he discovers the berg is a spaceship, manned by aliens from outer space, looking for men who have a keen sense of adventure. Seeking that next big thrill, Marlin agrees to join and the iceberg blasts off into space. "Inside the Iceberg" is another post-code SF tale that surely would have been enhanced by the pre-code. There's no sense of danger or dread; friendly aliens are the new norm. Happy endings are the pits.-Peter

Astonishing #49

Cover by Bill Everett

"To Conquer the Moon" (a: Bernard Baily) ★★

"What the Clouds Concealed" (a: Tony Mortellaro) ★★

"From Out of the Past!" (a: Dick Ayers) ★★1/2

(r: Giant-Size Chillers #1)

"The Searching Man" (a: Paul Reinman) ★

"The Sudden Storm" (a: Kurt Schaffenberger) ★★

"As I Lay Sleeping" (a: Tony DiPreta) ★★

Four men blast off on a trip "To Conquer the Moon"; all four have their own selfish reasons for making the trip. Once there, those selfish reasons grow to dangerous proportions. Luckily, an invisible, alien presence is there on the moon to zap the quartet with a dose of "Enriched Morality." All four astronauts return to Earth with a shared goal: to make the world a better place to live.

Now, I'm not saying happy endings should be outlawed, but it's almost as though one rule in the CCA guidelines is that the reader should leave a story feeling good about his fellow man. Kinda limits what a writer can accomplish with his typewriter, no? Man's greed plus invisible aliens on a faraway planet used to add up to some nasty (read that as cool) stuff. Here, we're just left with Bernard Baily's stellar penciling and an increased fondness for the pre-code days.

When a movie producer opts not to go for the cheap cardboard spaceship and instead picks up the real thing from a "scientist's estate," stuntman Barney finds himself in a bit of a pickle. Pushing the wrong button, Barney winds up piercing the dimensional wall and crash-landing on an alien planet populated by weird hostiles. Only Barney's ingenuity saves the day. Complete silliness, and yet "What the Clouds Concealed" is a charming and funny read. So many breaks go Barney's way that you just have to lean back and smile.

Three archaeology professors gloat about how much prehistoric stuff they've uncovered and that, surely, nothing more can be found, when they are notified of a dinosaur bone found in a nearby dig. They race over to find a new specimen they've never seen before. The academics order the crew to keep digging until, at last, they've reached the center of the Earth, where they find a museum filled with bones of creatures they've never seen before! It's a cute twist but, of course, it makes no sense. I doubt one excavator and a couple of workers could plow that far (and where would the dirt go?), and if I were one of the eggheads, I'd question how one of the skeletons got out of the museum and so far toward the surface. Should I stop now? Yep, you're right. "From Out of the Past!" is certainly a pleasing time-waster and contains some pretty good art from Dick Ayers. Did I really say that?

Emory Wallace finds a good luck charm in the street and suddenly becomes a wealthy man. After becoming comfortable in his wealth, he believes it was his genius that brought him fortune rather than his charm, so he tosses it back in the street. Predictably, his empire crumbles. To find that charm again, he becomes "The Searching Man." 

Panic and disaster follow "The Sudden Storm," but one old couple, the owners of a children's zoo, remain calm and in place even as the flood waters rise. That's because the zoo is a boat and the owner's name is Noah. Yeesh. There's another one that should be retired.

Precocious young Fred is obsessed with toy trains, but it's time to change out his old steam engine for one of those high-falutin' new 707s. Dad can't afford to pay for the engine (all the money's going on the horses and for booze), so Fred resigns himself to living a life of squalor and prehistory. Then a miracle happens! A 707 is pulling Fred's train one morning when he comes in from breakfast. "What the hell?" shouts Fred. He and Mom go down to the local toy shop and have a look in the window at their modern train set. Fred's old engine is pulling contemporary cars around its track!

The store owner throws up his hands in astonishment and Fred's mom tells her son they'll have to give the 707 back. Fred ain't happy but, heck, it's the right thing to do. The next morning, that 707 is right back in Fred's room, hauling ass around the tracks. Mom calls the store owner, who tells her that Fred can keep the super-duper miniature, which sits well with the miniature conductor of the train in the toy store window, who couldn't stand that new-fangled contraption. Another well-used plot but, as with "What the Clouds Concealed," I found "As I Lay Sleeping" to be a sweet little fantasy that forced me to smile for a millisecond.-Peter

Journey Into Mystery #34

Cover by Bill Everett

"The Secret of the Mystic Ring" (a: Robert Q. Sale) ★1/2

"The Long Way Home" (a: Bob Forgione) ★★

"A Penny for Your Dreams!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★★

"The Missing Man!" (a: Marvin Stein (?) and Gray Morrow (?)) ★

"Down to Earth" (a: Bob Powell) ★★

"Someone is Calling" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★★1/2

Arnold Harris and Marie Barnes reunite in a museum's Spanish room, in front of the busts of three people--a young man, a stern, older man, and a young woman. The busts depict Don Jose Fernandez and Dolores de Cazon, star-crossed lovers of three centuries ago in Sevilla whose romance was blocked by her father because Jose was poor. When Jose rescued a man drowning in quicksand, the man gave him a magic ring, but he lost it on the way back to the castle.

In the 1950s, Arnold buys a ring at a pawnshop to give to Marie as an engagement ring, and it grants her wish for wealth. She becomes a changed person, avoiding poor Arnold, until she loses the ring and they can be happy together. Oddly enough, a museum guard notices that the trio of busts have been rearranged. Now, the busts of the young woman and the young man are next to each other and the woman wears a ring!

"The Secret of the Mystery Ring" has a tired plot and ugly art by Robert Q. Sale, so it's four pages not well spent.

Mort "Old Creep" Mills hosts a TV show called The Joke is on You, and this week's prank involves taking several people on a fake deep-sea dive. In reality, they'll be in a diving bell that only goes down thirty feet, but undersea pictures will be projected on screens to fool them. At the end, the audience is supposed to yell out the show's title. All goes as planned until the end, where it's revealed that Mort is now in Atlantis and his guests have returned to their undersea home.

"The Long Way Home" reads like a watered-down EC story and Bob Forgione seems to be doing his best Jack Davis impersonation with the art. It's not terrible, but EC would've had a more shocking conclusion, something not allowed in this era.

In "A Penny for Your Dreams," bored subway riders discover a new vending machine that temporarily catapults them into the lives they've imagined. Clark Powers envisions himself a captain of industry and lays off two hundred employees just to feel powerful. Unfortunately, one of the men he fires turns out to be the man who refills the vending machine with its magic fluid, so Clark inadvertently ends his dream excursions. A better artist than Ed Winiarski might have done more with this story; I enjoyed the surprise ending but the people are drawn poorly.

A brilliant young scientist named Greg has been spending too much time alone, working on his project. His father comes to talk sense to him and to remind him that Astra, his girlfriend, won't wait forever. Greg listens to his Pop and destroys his lab, recalling the discs he sent into space to attempt the first interplanetary travel. He agrees that nothing on Mars is worth unhappiness. Far away, on Earth, scientists happily announce that the mysterious flying saucers are leaving.

The GCD suggests Marvin Stein and Gray Morrow as the artists for this tepid three-page story. The art is particularly bad, but if I squint, the next-to-last panel could be Morrow's work.

A flying saucer approaches Earth, ignoring radio messages and unaffected by shells fired from a jet. The craft lands on Earth in a field and a crowd of people approach it in fear. The Army unleashes firepower to no effect. Finally, a young boy runs up to the saucer, excited and wide-eyed. The hatch opens and the aliens hail the boy as Earth's leader, happy at being welcomed as friends. The crowd follows in like manner and, from then on, there is a steady flow of friendly traffic among the planets.

"Down to Earth" shows what above-average art can do for an average story. Bob Powell is one of my favorite Atlas artists and seems always to bring something extra to his tales.

One snowy evening, a reporter named Fred is sent out by his tyrannical editor to save two men who send a plea for help over the teletype. Fred drives a snow plow to a mountain to rescue a duo, but they insist they sent no message. Another message comes in and back out goes Fred, this time by horse-drawn sleigh, to rescue two men from a lake, but again, they did not send the message. Fred heads off a third time, now piloting a helicopter, and saves two men trapped in a valley by snow. Finally, the fourth time, he tunnels through snow and saves a pair trapped under snowdrifts.

What is going on? On the moon, moon men are finally rescued and complain about the inefficiency of the moon rescue squad.

Arrgh! Bernie Krigstein does a stellar job illustrating a story that is actually funny, for a change, and--as so often happens with Atlas--the writer fails to deliver a satisfying ending. Almost anything would have been better than men on the moon. Save for the last three panels, "Someone is Calling" would fit in a Best of Atlas collection.-Jack

Journey Into Unknown Worlds #45

Cover by Sol Brodsky

"The Night Visitor" (a: Steve Ditko) ★★

"The World Beneath the Sea!" (a: Al Williamson & Gray Morrow) ★★1/2

"Journey of No Return" (a: Bob McCarthy) ★1/2

"The Derelict in Space!" (a: Ed Winiarski) ★1/2

"...And Never Come Back" (a: George Roussos) ★1/2

"Man Against the Moon" (a: John Forte) ★1/2

Harry Carter sees a flying saucer overhead one evening and rushes to warn Constable Taylor, who is not interested but who deputizes Harry on the spot so Harry can investigate. Harry locates the spacecraft and climbs inside, where he is knocked unconscious. When he awakens, he gets out and sees that he's been flown to within ten miles of his hometown. Harry races to the police station, but the chief is not interested. He calls the mayor, who is also nonplussed. Harry takes a train to the capital, only to learn that he's on Jupiter! The folks there seem nice and he suspects he'll be happy there.

Ditko does a nice job with this hokey Wessler tale, making the denizens of Jupiter have slightly longer, more angular faces than humans and keeping those faces hidden from the reader till the last panel.

Ted Higgens took up skin diving in order to find "The World Beneath the Sea!" Other sailors say he has the raptures and imagines things underwater, but when Ted descends past 300 feet, he sees beautiful women and they take him to their kingdom. He has to return to the surface, but one of the women gives him a rose to remember them by. Ted's ship mates don't believe his story, but he has the rose.

Al Williamson and Gray Morrow combine to provide a feast for the eyes, for the most part. The old bit about bringing a trophy back from an unbelievable place adds nothing, but the art is worth a look.

After a flaming meteorite plunges into the sea next to Frolic Land amusement park, a giant Ferris Wheel is built that reaches up to the clouds. Only those who already have tickets are allowed to ride. Why? It's a "Journey of No Return" that takes aliens home, presumably after they had crash-landed in the meteorite. At least that's what I think happened. I knew from the first caption that the story was going to end along these lines.

A rocket ship approaches a space station and lands, but the men aboard the rocket ship find the space station deserted. A diary reveals that the station was visited by an alien ship and the aliens were "radiantly handsome" and had "soul-stirring" voices. The aliens offered to take the humans to their planet, where "everyone knows only happiness," but they had to decide right away. From the looks of things, the humans chose to go, leaving mid-meal and not bringing extra clothes. The men from the rocket ship wonder if it's a hoax. Just then, events begin to replay as an alien ship approaches the space station and hovers close by.

Boy, those humanoid aliens sure were handsome! And their voices were so mellifluous! The men on the space station dropped everything to zip off with them in their space ship. One wonders if there were any alien women on the far off planet or if this one slipped past the CCA readers.

Rudy Yates is convicted of a crime and sentenced to leave the Earth "...And Never Come Back." He is put in a small rocket ship and he heads to Mars, but they heard the radio broadcasts about his crimes and don't want him either. Rudy flies to Saturn, where he cheats Saturnians and is eventually banished. Visits to Venus, Uranus, and the moon all end badly. Finally, he lands on a small, empty planet, only to discover that it's a man-made satellite and, technically, he's back on Earth.

George Roussos does nothing to enliven a story that gets tiresome quickly. When Rudy journeyed from Uranus to the moon I was reminded of Ed Norton's viewing Captain Video on The Honeymooners: "'And now we blast off for Pluto and the moon!'"

On the day that Ken Marlin is supposed to navigate the crew on man's first trip to the moon, he visits a planetarium and dozes off during a presentation on the lunar landscape. Thinking he's dreaming, he encounters representatives of an old civilization who live in caverns beneath the moon's surface and who ask that he and his crew rescue them when they arrive. Ken wakes up and finds something in his pocket that the moon man handed him, so he knows it was no dream.

John Forte's wooden art does little to improve yet another story that ends with someone finding something in his pocket that proves "it was no dream." "Man Against the Moon" concludes what is a mediocre issue of Journey Into Unknown Worlds, despite contributions by Ditko and Williamson.-Jack

Next Week...
The Dynamic Duo Battle
International Spies in a...
unique... espionage thriller!